MMORPG: Rebirth of the Legendary Guardian

Floating Fire Ball’s real name was Lu Ming. He was someone you could say was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. But unlike other rich boys, he does not like cars, parties, or even girls. His attention was for online games! He would definitely play games that were popular then and did not hesitate to spend some money in-game. With his own decent gaming ability, he would unquestionably raise some kind of uproar in whatever game he played!

When ‘God’s Miracle’ was launched, Lu Ming entered the game and established the guild called ‘Pride’. Since Lu Ming was famous in the gaming world, he could naturally gather up a large group of underlings, but most of them were only in it for the money.

Lu Ming’s greatest hobby was to show off his level! If he wanted to get an equipment, he could just throw some money into the game and buy them off the auction house! That was why in most games that he played, he chose the best character for leveling which was Spellcaster or the infamous high attack and low defense “Blaze Wizard”! Undeniably, he made the right choice as he entered the Level Ranking Board just on the second day of launching and made it to the top on the fourth day and managed to keep it that way.

When he was grinding in the Spectre Crypt before, he had Pride to clear the ground outside, making sure no one could enter to disturb his leveling progress!

“Pah! Pah! Pah!” Every time Lu Ming casted a , a monster would fall and die! If it was not his attack power that was at a point of delivering a one-hit KO, his followers would have preemptively dealt some damage to allow him to take the killing blow. In a non-party situation, the player that dealt the last hit claimed 50% of the shared experience point. That was why Lu Ming was ultimately ranked first in the Level Ranking Board and planted firmly at the top.

Finally after an uncountable number of fallen monsters on the ground, Lu Ming reached Level 20 with a flash of golden light around him! Awesome! Heh heh, truly awesome indeed! He already reached Level 20 when everyone else were still at Level 13 to 15. It was such a thrill to be leaving them behind! Lu Ming opened the ranking board to enjoy the feeling of having a huge gap between his place and the second.

Eh? Level 21? Is this a miracle, or a system error? After fighting so many monsters, he thought his eyes deceived him to not be able to differentiate 20 from 21. He rubbed his eyes and checked the list again.

[Level Ranking Board] (China Server)

Slim and Handsome, Elf, Beastmaster, Level 21

Lu Ming almost puked blood! He was no longer the first! Where did this Level 21 bastard come out from to kick me down to the second place?!

Hundred Shots, Elf, Beastmaster, Level 21

Miracle! Ridiculous! Absurd! How could another Level 21 Hunter get on the Ranking board? Could a hunter be that much more effective at leveling? Crap, I’m now at third place!

Little Snow, Human, Priest, Level 20

Lu Ming was bewildered.

Drizzler, Human, Berserker, Level 20

Floating Fire Ball, Human, Pyromancer, Level 20

What. What?! WHAT!? Did everybody take some power pills or Viagra? How could they push me down to the fifth position? His expression changed, turning sour and bitter. He went to the party channel and said, “Slim and Handsome, Hundred Shots, Little Snow, and Drizzler. Can anyone tell me about these guys?”

“Bro, you didn’t know? Slim and Handsome and Hundred Shots were in the team that got the first clear achievement in the Bangar Crypt whereas Little Snow and Drizzler got the first kill for the Grey-Silver Boss yesterday and went up in the Board of Achievements! They’re all strong players! We never knew they could be so good at leveling as well!”

Lu Ming’s expression turned for the worst. After some time, he said, “Piggy Head, I need you to find out where these players are at. If they’re based in White Jade City, bring some people along and kill them! Motherf*ckers don’t know who they’re messing with! They don’t know what death is!”

Feeling prideful, Piggy Lover responded, “Yes, Fire bro!”

…

After a short break, Zhang Yang re-logged.

‘Ding! You have reached Level 20. The currency exchange service is now available for you! Do you wish to bind your National Debit Service with your game account?’

“Yes!” Zhang Yang reacted quickly.

‘Ding! Syncing your brainwave with the Banking details. Please hold!’

‘Ding! Matching National Debit Service found. Account: 3205XXXXXXXXXXX. Please check if all details are correct, then select ‘Accept’ to continue!’

“Continue!”

‘Ding! Your account is now bound with the National Debit Service. You can now use this currency exchange service to trade in-game currency to real-life currency and vice versa! This service is available at Banks in any main cities. Please check with the Bank notice for the accurate exchange rate!’

Zhang Yang arrived at the Bank and checked, and so far the current exchange rate from in-game to real-life currency is 1:8. Obviously, the inflation rate of the in-game currency will rise. Without giving much thought, Zhang Yang kept 1,000 gold to buy herbs and exchanged the rest of his gold to dollars. Before this, he had more than 20,000 gold pieces, and now after exchanging it, he became ‘poor’ in the game, but in reality his bank deposit rose to 160,000 in just a few days!

Zhang Yang felt grateful. If he had not been reborn, he would not have obtained the [Earthen Round Shield] recipe, but discarding old equipment was fast especially when the Marzerway’s Lair started to gain more attention. After the Grey-Silver piece of shield spawned, the [Earthen Round Shield] would be extremely hard to sell even at 10 gold.

That is why knowledge is power! And his knowledge was about the future, which made it even more valuable! As long as he could just pile up more herbs and materials to craft the [Beginner Anti-Shadow Potion], his chance to gain more fortune would come when the crowd started to reach Level 20 and began raiding Marzerway’s Lair!

Zhang Yang thought about it as he arrived to the Warrior’s Home and decided to learn new Level 20 skills from the instructor. After paying 20 gold pieces, his skill windows had two new skills.

[Cripple Defense]: Destroys target defense value by 10%. Cause 50% melee damage to the target. The maximum stacked effect is 5. Lasts for 30 seconds. This skill will generate a large amount of aggro.

Rage cost: 10

Cooldown time: 1 second

Requirement: Melee weapon.

[Thunder Strike]: Borrows the power of thunder to deliver a powerful strike onto the ground, dealing 100% physical damage to all surrounding enemies. Inflicted targets will have 50% speed reduction for 5 seconds. This skill will generate a large amount of aggro.

Rage cost: 20

Cooldown time: 8 seconds

[Cripple Defense] was a general skill that all warriors had, but [Thunder Strike] was a skill only Guardians could learn. The same went for the skill [Tornado Cleave], which was also an AoE skill that was only available for Berserker class.

After some time, Hundred Shots, Little Snow, and Drizzler logged in. Zhang Yang first let Drizzler invite Hundred Shots and then only the rest of the Lone Desert Smoke members to raid the Bangar Crypt Hardcore Mode. Since Drizzler and Little Snow now have known that Hundred Shots will be one of the five-man party for the raid the next day, he had priority over the equipment distribution. The Lone Desert Smoke members did not say anything at all but their expressions could tell that they were not happy.

Players tend to be greedy from time to time. Yesterday after feeling contented in being able to break pass the Hardcore Mode, they thought the equipment in today’s haul should have belonged to them. They would obviously not want to willingly surrender the equipment to any random person. Because of that, the atmosphere started to get colder and colder. Conversations became lesser and only got lively during equipment rolling.

Before Zhang Yang could begin the fight with the final boss, Fatty Han talked over the voice chat in an effort to contact Zhang Yang.

“Little Yang, I’m being ambushed! Come and fight with me!”

“What happened? Did you finally get stung by the bees when you’ve been messing with too many flowers?” Zhang Yang laughed.

“No! A bunch of nobody from ‘Pride’ attacked me out of nowhere for no reason! Crap, I’m about to die… F*ck! I really died!” Fatty Han growled angrily.

The guild ‘Pride’? Those people again? Zhang Yang felt rage and said, “You wait there and don’t revive just yet. I’m coming now!”

“Okay, but you better hurry! I will not rest until I get my revenge. I’ll kill them all!” Fatty Han’s killing intent was getting stronger.

Zhang Yang switched to his party channel to inform them, “I’m sorry. Urgent matter, I have to leave now! You guys could wait or you could swap a tank and continue the dungeon!” After sending the message, he immediately left the party, tore a piece of [Teleportation Scroll] and sent a party invitation to Fatty Han.

“Zhan Yu, what happened?” Drizzler sent a private message to him.

“My friend, the fat one, got killed by someone. I’m going over to kill them!”

Drizzler suddenly got excited and said “Wow! A fight! Count me in!”

Zhang Yang thought that if they were to be a team in the future, they would need to have each other’s back, so he sent a party invitation to Drizzler too.

“And my cousin sister!” Drizzler wanted to include Little Snow as well.

Hundred Shots sent a private message at the same time and after knowing what happened, he demanded to be invited into the party as well. And so the afternoon party was together once more!

“Fatty, where are you?”

“Eastern side, once you exit the city. Jade Dragon River, Position 12464, 39743.”

“How many of them are there?”

“About 10 and more. Shit, I dropped a level! These bastards!” Fatty Han gritted his teeth. He was now Level 20 with 0% Experience Points, instantly dropping him from first to the fifth rank on the board.

“Okay, wait by the body. We’ll be arriving soon enough!”

Zhang Yang hastened his pace. To be honest, he did not even consider the 10 players to be a threat to him. With his skills and the equipment he has obtained so far, he could be killing a hundred men with ease! Very soon, Zhang Yang arrived at the point. By the huge river side, there were more than 10 players surrounding a body, spitting and stepping on it. Some were murmuring something but he was too far away to hear it.

These people did not hide their personal profile information and had the ‘Pride’ guild tag on their heads, every one of them being at Level 13 to 15.

Zhang Yang scanned and recognized a few people! Floral Pants, Prideful Precepts and the rest of the four-man party. Kindling Chest Hair was not there because they were killed back to level 3, as they were only level 13 then.

Zhang Yang unsheathed his Silver-Scaled Sword, with eyes that radiated a powerful killing intent.